It was a day of the week, so as usual, I was thinking about how my opinions are better than those of other people and of course zombies. Ambiguous grammar ftw. Anyway, here's the part where I link something to pretend that I don't just think this stuff whenever I have more than five seconds. Liore is an MMO anarchist,
supporting all manner of terror and insanity, valuing chaos above
order, apparently believing that that is what makes for great events and
experiences. I agree, to an extent.

A freer experience works better in games than in real life. The consequences of the downsides are smaller. It is a game and so the potential harm is limited. Even further, our perception of the experience is different. If you blew up my house in real life, I'd be rather upset and traumatized. I'd do all manner of whining to the police and insurance company. Do it in a game and I mind be upset, but it's also an opportunity to hunt you down and kill you. Rather than being a disaster, it is an experience and opportunity. You see, in the virtual world, that stupid cliche about Chinese about characters for crisis and opportunity is actually true (as opposed to being ignorant bullshit that fits well into the "wise old Asian person" stereotype).

There are limits though. If my virtual house gets blown up every week it will lose the novelty. Even if I'm playing Blowing Houses Up Online I might not want to have my house blown up every week.

Then there are the assholes who ruin it for everyone else. They come in two types. The first type, the obvious type, are the griefers. They'll kill your quest giver over and over for an hour. They'll cause content to be tweaked, such as making attacks on quest givers spawn guards, which may or may not help, but the thought is there at least.

The second type is the one that actually gets content removed. These are the whiny babies. They think that a zombie invasion is somehow not awesome. Not a permanent zombie invasion, just a temporary one. A completely novel event is apparently the end of the world. They discourage new events and new ideas.

In their minds, the people spreading the plague are not participating in the event. They aren't players playing the game as intended. Oh no, they're griefing assholes. Apparently playing the game in a way that is even the slightest bit disruptive or interesting, is griefing. Even when it is a one-time event. Never to be repeated, thanks to the whiny babies.

1 comments:

The problem with the big freedom and chaos is the same as with every system - people need to (want to) play according to the same rules. you can have a great MMO that allows griefers to thrive and organize themselves and where the 'other side' is equally organized and takes the challenge head on, with tools to balance things out. however, that only ever works if you assume a playerbase with equal time (and nerve) to engage in this type of gameplay and community effort. and this inevitably means you cannot cater to all playstyles in a game - which is why we see little of that freedom (devs WANT to cater to many playstyles, especially if more casual is a majority) on the current market.it's also what I wrote about sandboxes a while ago - if you wish for that, be ready to invest a lot.